Ensuring cow diversity
Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - 09:00
in Biology & Nature
Plant breeders hunting for genes to combat new diseases or adapt to changes in climate can plumb the vast diversity of crops and their wild relatives using envelopes of seed banked in cold storage, but cattle breeders are limited to herds here and now. A new $500,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, however, is funding research on a new, stem cell-based system that could capture global herd diversity in a subzero vault.